Monday, January 25, 2010

Who's on Ark duty?

Gabe is back to his old tricks so I'm assuming he's feeling 100 percent once again, thank goodness! I've decided to make all of the horse's morning and evening meals much soupier than I have been and I'm adding about a tablespoon of salt to each feeding to encourage the drinking. They are all gobbling it up and the level of the water tanks seem to be continuously falling, so that's a good thing.

I knew Gabe was definitely feeling better when he kept tipping over the wheel barrow, trying to steal the pitchfork out of my hands and hanging his head over my shoulder while I was cleaning his run-in Sunday. That horse knows exactly where to put his body so he's right where I want to clean! Then, he has to be right at my back, resting his chin on my shoulder, sighing into my ear and nuzzling at my hair. A year ago, he would have been biting chunks out of me, now, he just makes a pest of himself and begs for face and ear scratching.

It rained yet again and the weather forecasters are calling for MORE rain. The mud that was drying out a tad bit (still sticky and nasty, but a little firmer and some of the puddles had diminished in size a tad) is again thick, sticky and disgusting.

My husband and I spent part of the day Saturday removing a cross fence. We had the fence up back when Chief and Calypso couldn't play nice with Gabe so they were kept separated when turned out in the pastures. They all get along very well now so we decided to go ahead and take down the cross fence. The pasture is a bog. Both of us kept punching through the grassy sod into goopy, nasty mud below and making rather obscene squishing noises wherever we walked. I could pull the T-posts out of the soupy ground with ONE HAND, and those suckers were set deep. Our fences are capped T-posts with three strands of ElectroBraid. The corner posts are round 6-inch diameter wood posts set at least three feet into concrete. The freaking corner posts are LOOSE due to the bog-like conditions, the T-posts are loose and because we keep having freezing, thawing, freezing, thawing conditions, the ground has heaved some of them up and others out of the nice, neat, straight line they were set in. GAH! We have our work cut out for us when it finally does dry out enough to re-set and straighten some of those posts.

So, I've tried to think of a few positive things about all this rain and wet. I couldn't come up with many, not this time of year.

1. Our well is most certainly full!
2. Spring flowers and grass are getting a nice, long pre-season drink.
3. The water table is sufficiently high to deal with the summer dry season.
4. The waterfowl are happy.
5. The pond and creek are full, full, full!
6. We drained our 12-foot deep swimming pool this fall and it's almost FULL again! Guess we won't have to order a water truck in to refill it this spring.

I don't think I have enough blog space to list all the negative things about the rain and wet this time of year!

I'm a whole lot worried about what spring will bring as that is typically our "wet season." The road we live off has been flooded more often than not this year and the road itself is starting to crumble and sink. It's next to a deep, deep creek with very, very high banks. The creek has been creeping closer and closer and closer to the road and I have a feeling we may lose sections of the road entirely this spring if it's as wet and rainy as I expect it will be.

9 comments:

  1. Hey Jenn! I hear you - its hard to find anything positive about all this rain (I'm in Western North Carolina) but you've done well! Our farm is right on the French Broad River, and we are holding our breaths to see if we will have to move the horses - AGAIN! Good luck to you!

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  2. I hate to say I'm glad to hear it's not just me dealing with all this extra rain, but boy, I'm glad it's not just mean cursing and shaking my fist at the sky every time it opens back up and dumps more wet on us!

    I hope you don't have to move your horses! I really should be a better horse owner and come up with an "emergency plan" in case I ever did have to move them in an emergency. Right now, all the boarding barns I know are FULL, so I really wouldn't have any where to take them.

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  3. Attic?? lol.
    Seriously, I feel your pain. Rain was one of the reasons we moved away from the SW of England. Yeah the summers where hot and that was nice but it RAINED all the time. We had a tiny acerage and it didn't matter how warm and wet it was grass couldn't grow because the horses turned everything to mud.
    Mud used to seep through the hard standing on the drive and by June I would be very fed up of only being able to get in the car with the aid of wellies :(
    Scotland is colder but its mostly drier and it means my horses can live outside for most of the year.
    SO yeah..I get where your coming from. x

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  4. Oh yay, glad Gabe's back to normal! Good luck drying out eventually. It's an el nino year; next year will be better!

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  5. Nice top ten list! Mine is pretty similar, except that this is our DRY FIRE SEASON and we're underwater.

    But the well/aquifer/water table is brim-full. And I took advantage of that - with the longest shower I have ever taken in my life. It was amazing! So take that excess water vapor!!

    Off to upload more mud/flood/horse pics at Union Square Stables.. LOL

    Natalie Keller Reinert
    Retired Racehorse Blog

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  6. Thanks Jenn - looks like we will be OK....this time! V and I are actually working on an alternative evac plan, as it seems this will be more and more of a problem. With the drought the past 5 years we have rarely had to move them. When the ground thaws we will fence in a few acres she owns across the street on high ground, put up a shelter and shed for hay/feed storage. We will sleep much better at night!

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  7. Yea..with ya on the wet ick here too...warm enough to make soup of fields. I am trying to get my PBO to rotate/divide..but she is not the planner I am. Someday will get to test my theory out on my own property!

    So get this...my sissy was here for 15 days and out of that time we got to ride 5 times only..it was sooo bad. The day after she left..sunny skies, the next and also today! And I am working!
    Well,...spring is coming and then we may cheer up and have other things to think about!
    So glad Gabe is better and to answer the shadow roll question for Wa mare...I wanted to see if it would help here to look/stretch more at low speeds and to look less at high. Make sense? Plus..I like the way it looks! No harm so far, though she did pull the wide open mouth on me cause I had to take the flash off...not riding enough and she is rearing to go!
    Kac

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  8. Whew..I just found your blog and always get a pit in my stomach when reading about Colic. My 8 yr old OTTB colicked this Oct and unfort we weren't so lucky as it brought on a severe case of laminitis. Ugh..but we are getting by and I'm lucky to still have him, as there were many, many touch and go. Why are these boys so fragile?! I wish they made horse sized tums!!! Actually, no, if I'm wishing..I wish our horse babies could TALK! :)

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  9. Kac...I figured that's why you put the shadow roll on her. How's it working for ya?

    Kristen...thank you for stopping by! I lost my wonderful 14 yo TB mare to colic five years ago. I still miss her. My husband lost his gorgeous little paint mare to colic 7 years ago. Colic is nasty, nasty, nasty and so scary. And unfortunately, no matter what we do to try to prevent it, you just never know what's going to cause them to colic. I wish too that they could tell us exactly where it hurts. That would make things so much easier!

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